Race to the bottom

I know that many consumers complain about the high prices of construction/remodeling cost in the United States. Not everyone is aware of the high cost of labor, and materials that is involved in any construction project. Customers equate high prices with high profits. The reality is quite the opposite.
Consumers are indiscriminately hiring rogue or sometimes illegal contractors, handymen and other fly by night operations for construction services. In most cases, these unqualified operations are desperate for money, and accept projects at cost or below cost prices. Most of the time, they have no intentions to finish the projects they start, and they hunt for more and more projects to keep them afloat. Consumers end up getting hurt both financially and emotionally and they simply loose their trust in all contractors.
A side effect of this is the downward pressure on prices that legitimate and legal contractors need to charge for construction/remodeling projects in order to provide high quality services. Legitimate contractors have to incur many costs such as bonds, insurance, legal wages, taxes, etc. All of this cost must be recouped from projects over a year's duration in order to continue to operate a quality enterprise. When the prices are pushed down by illegal competition, many contractors will either go out of business or they will end up providing less than perfect services. The cost has to be accounted for and unfortunately it is the consumers who will end up suffering from lowered service quality.

What do I mean from lowered service quality?

• It could be in the form of shorter warranties,
• lower quality of workmanship resulting from hurried project completions,
• unresponsiveness to smaller projects, etc.

What can the consumers do to avoid this from happening to them?

• Pay a fair price for the projects.
• Don't compare prices from illegal operations to legitimate contractors.
• Do your homework and set your own expectations right based on industry prices.
• Don't abuse good contractors and frustrate them out of business.
  
• Keep in mind we all need good contractors to survive in our economy and we cannot outsource contractor work in construction.

Good luck.

Murat Aksu
A1A Team
(703) 728-8836

Civility and Courtesy

What is the biggest consumer complaint about contractors? "They don't respond to customer inquiries in a timely manner or not at all." For the most part, this is true. Customers may have to call 4-5 contractors before they receive a call back from 1 or 2 of them.

So what is the biggest contractor complaint about consumers? "When they respond to consumer inquiries with a written proposal, they do not hear back from them unless the contract is accepted." In our daily life, none of us, contractors or consumers tend to act this way. We usually return phone calls to people that we know. We respond back to provide feedback or at least an answer to each other.

Imagine that you call a doctor's office to make an appointment. They call you the day before your appointment to confirm. If you have to cancel your appointment, you would call and inform that you will not be coming in to see the doctor. This is just a common courtesy and a requirement of civility. Why should we act differently when it comes to contracting business?

We can all do better, as contractors and consumers, if we only returned phone calls and provided feedback (yea or nae) to written proposals that we receive. Happy Easter to all that celebrates it.

Best Regards,

Murat Aksu
A1A
April 5th, 2007